CHAP. V.] OPENING MANHOOD 1847 TO 1850. 137 



variety of the characters ; there must therefore be something 

 overpoweringly attractive to hold you to the book. Some 

 say he has fine thoughts, sufficient to set up fifty poets; to 

 which some may answer, Where are they ? Eead it in a 

 spirit of cold criticism, and they vanish. There is not one 

 that is not either erroneous, absurd, German, common, or 

 Daft. Where lies the beauty ? In the reader's mind. 

 The author has evidently been thinking when he wrote it, 

 and that not in words, but inwardly. The benevolent reader 

 is compelled to think too, and it is so great a relief to the 

 reader to get out of wordiness that he can put up with 

 insanity, absurdity, profanity, and even inanity, if by so 

 doing he can get into rapport with one who is so trans- 

 cendental, and yet so easy to follow, as the poet. When 

 Galileo set his [lamp] a-swinging by breathing on it, his power 

 lay in the relation between the interval of his breaths and 

 the time of vibration ; so in Festus the mind that begins to 

 perceive that his train of thoughts is that of the poem is 

 readily made to follow on. There are some passages where 

 one breaks loose, especially the rhyming description of the 

 subpoenaing of the planets, and the notion of the angel of the 

 earth giving Festus a pair of bracelets, and the way in 

 which F. improves his mind by travel. 



. . . Beauty is attributed to an 6bject when the subject 

 anticipates pleasure in it. A true pleasure is a conscious- 

 ness of the right action of the faculty or function or power. 

 Happiness is the integral of pleasure, as wisdom is of know- 

 ledge. . . . Don't take all this about Festus for truth, as I 

 don't believe much of it, and I'll maybe tell you a new story 

 if you tell me one. 



What of St. Peter, as compared with the Keys and with 

 Bob? 1 



FKOM PROF. FORBES. 



Edinburgh, 4th May 1850. 



MY DEAR SIR Professor Kelland, to whom your paper 

 was referred by the Council R S., reports favourably upon 



1 ie. Is Robert Campbell going to Peterhouse or Cains ? 



